Cullen's sign
Template:Infobox medical condition (new) Cullen's sign, also known as umbilical black eye, is superficial edema and bruising in the subcutaneous fatty tissue around the umbilicus.
It is named for gynecologist Thomas Stephen Cullen (1869–1953),[1] who first described the sign in ruptured ectopic pregnancy in 1916.[2]
This sign takes 24–48 hours to appear and can predict acute pancreatitis, with mortality rising from 8–10% to 40%. It may be accompanied by Grey Turner's sign[3] (bruising of the flank), which may then be indicative of pancreatic necrosis with retroperitoneal or intra-abdominal bleeding.
Causes
Causes include:
- acute pancreatitis, where methemalbumin formed from digested blood tracks around the abdomen from the inflamed pancreas
- bleeding from blunt abdominal trauma
- bleeding from aortic rupture
- bleeding from ruptured ectopic pregnancy
Importance of the sign is on a decline since better diagnostic modalities are now available.
References
External links
Template:Digestive system and abdomen symptoms and signs Template:General injuries
- ↑ synd/1386 at Whonamedit?
- ↑ T.S. Cullen. Embryology, anatomy, and diseases of the umbilicus together with diseases of the urachus. Philadelphia, Saunders, and London, 1916.
- ↑ Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1".